angel: a demon who is a messenger for a deity.
chaos: a fount of creation, transformation, and destruction.
chaos mist: a light suspension of primal chaos in the air; dangerous but not a disaster.
chaos storm: the result of a large chunk of chaos floating through the air and breaking up, much like a chaos mist with thick splashes of denser chaos transforming all they touch.
chaos wave: a great slop of chaos over the edge of a Great Island, usually considered a disaster for anyone and anything caught in it.
demon: a being whose native existence is in the transcendent world. From the Greek daimon (daimon). Most of the demons that visit the physical world are either on a mission from a deity, hence angels, or on a mission of self-aggrandizement, so when most people talk about “demons” they usually mean something big and nasty. Some scholars of magic say daimon to indicate their technical usage rather than the common one.
druid: a theurgist who works with the power of Nature directly. (This is not historically correct; this is for fantasy gaming purposes.) “Anti-druids”, necromanctic theurgists who wield the power of Unlife directly without a divine intermediary, have not yet been observed.
ecos: the pool of energy associated with a functioning ecology. Stems from the transcendent power of Nature, but is accessible to thaumaturgists.
elemental: a spirit from the elemental worlds in the spirit plane.
Great Island: an island floating on chaos, as distinct from an island within a sea.
necromancer: a wizard or priest who taps the energies of Unlife, whether directly or through necros.
necros: energy derived by breaking up the flow of ecos.
numen: a spirit that is attached to a place, a genius loci, comparable to the Japanese concept of kami.
order: a fount of stability and organization, balancing the ever-changing chaos to make long-lasting creations possible.
physical plane: the physical world, where most things have a stable form and navigation is handled in linear dimensions.
power site: a place of magical significance, equivalent to a strong feng shui site in the normal game.
priest: a practitioner of theurgy whose power is channeled by a deity, as distinct from a druid.
quest: a goal sanctioned by a power on the order of a deity. Any session in which the adventurers make progress on a quest is equivalent to one spent attuned to a feng shui site.
quest item: a special magic item that causes its bearer to be on a particular quest when the opportunity presents itself. (Think of the sword Need from Mercedes Lackey’s Oathbound and Oathbreakers.)
shallowing: the good old Ars Magica notion of a regio, a pocket of separate reality hovering between the physical plane and the spirit plane; term stolen from White Wolf’s Mage.
sorcerer: another common term for a thaumaturgist; some cultures associate the term with using magic to harm, while other culture consider it a synonym for wizard and equally non-pejorative.
spirit: a being whose existence is not based in the physical plane. Usually refers to a denizen of the spirit plane rather than a demon.
spirit plane: the world of the spirits, which touches upon the physical plane but extends into deeper territory, some of which is in correspondence with the transcendent plane.
thaumaturgist: the technical term for a wizard, a practitioner of thaumaturgy.
thaumaturgy: working of magic by channeling power from a source in the spirit world.
theurgist: the technical term for a priest or druid.
theurgy: working of magic by channeling power from a source in the transcendent world, usually a deity.
transcendent plane: the abode of gods, angels, and demons.
undead: corpses animated with the power of unlife, whether grossly or subtly. Undead beings range from the crude skeletons and zombies to the sophisticated vampires and liches.
unlife: running the cycle of Nature backwards. Unlife sucks the energy out of living things to support itself. Death, followed by consequent undeath, marks the rebirth of living things into unlife. Unlife is usually fuelled by consuming life, but there are tales of lands under a black sun that nourishes the wheel of unlife just as the normal sun nourishes life.
warping: the transformation of life by magical energies or direct exposure to chaos.
wizard: the most common and least offensive term for a thaumaturgist.